Indigenous people of the American West used 'sacred' horses a half-century earlier than previously t

[Bayard]

5. That is what this article addresses

The first horses on this continent did not arrive from Europe--they were already here. Horses actually developed here as a species, then spread to other parts of the world.

There are now many, many authoritative articles on the subject.

Here's one excerpt from an article in the American Museum of Natural History:

"By 55 million years ago, the first members of the horse family, the dog-sized Hyracotherium, were scampering through the forests that covered North America. For more than half their history, most horses remained small, forest browsers. But changing climate conditions allowed grasslands to expand, and about 20 million years ago, many new species rapidly evolved. Some--but not all--became larger and had the familiar hooves and grazing diets that we associate with horses today. Only these species survived to the present, but in the past, small and large species lived side by side."